A/N: I know that to some of you this doesn't come as a surprise :-). Kudos to those who knew.
Good thing is, coming back from my skiing holidays, I brought a second chapter (almost done) that I'll put up in a few days probably... so the next one will not have such a long wait.
Thanks again for all the lovely commentaries; you guys are really what fuels me on to continue and finish this.
And now, without further ado...
Chapter 60: In search of a Friend
"I– I never thought there could be anything worse than being all alone in the night." "But there is. Being all alone in a crowd."
Picpus at night was a wholly different scenery compared to the place at day. Éponine, standing at the entry of the cemetery, ran a hand through her tangled hair and wondered how she should proceed.
During daytime, the place was crowded with beggars and cutpurses, sometimes chased away, sometimes tolerated by the brothers and sisters of the order. Benevolence and generosity thrived in proximity of a cemetery, and therefore everyone tried to get their share of the visitors' bad conscience, a coin for a beggar to bring their soul closer to heaven.
It was a very pragmatic view that most of the miserables took at this mechanism, but in their situation they could not afford to be overmuch pious.
Of course, with the visitors gone, so were the beggars. Éponine should have known but in the end she hadn't thought of it. Picpus had been Azelma's realm. To ask for coins in front of a church was just the sort of easy task that her father would assign her. Éponine, on the other hand, had been given the more difficult errands.
So, her plan of how to look for Azelma was gone and she needed a new one. The silent eyes and ears that had certainly seen her sister move about and would know what happened to her had moved to their nightly dwellings, and Éponine knew it would take time, effort, and certainly a lot of courage to seek them out.
For a moment, she stood on the deserted place, her gaze wandering as she wondered what had happened to her little sister. But the walls of the cemetery offered no counsel at all.
Time to turn to more unusual sources. Such as the lighted windows at the corner of the cemetery place. A small house standing on its own, the ground floor and two stories only. A small, almost overgrown garden surrounded it and as Éponine neared, she realized that behind the hedge and fences, there was a small garden where a few people sat, chatting and laughing the day away.
Three iron forged ducks standing at the entrance to the garden were testimony to the name of the place.
Les trois canards.
This was were the Picpus section met. Occasionally, that was.
But she never got as far as looking for them.
"Hey you!" The voice was harsh and determining, and Éponine found herself faced with a man who was probably the patron of the place, well more than a head taller than her, towering over her with the obvious superiority of someone who had never had a taste of the harsh life on the streets. "Here's no place for you. Get lost."
For a moment, she felt a slight surprise at the fact, that this, of all places, was where the Picpus section met, but she did not have much time to dwell on that thought, because the man already grabbed her arms.
"I will not have my customers harassed by the likes of you", he continued, almost nastily, and his fingers around her arm were like a cage."Get lost."
But Eponine was not easily intimidated.
"I'm looking for a friend", she said. "He…", she tried her best to remember what she had seen of the Picpus delegates during the meetings of the groups. There was the priest – but he would not be in this place, she guessed. There must have been a second delegate, but she did not remember him.
And then the chaos of the Corinthe…
She resisted the hand that tried to throw her out from the premises, desperately searching her memory for a recollection of someone else from the group.
A dark skinned doctor, acting with remarkable calm between the injured of the Corinthe.
"Abati", she finally blurted out. "Abati. Dark skin. Medical student."
For a moment, the patron hesistated, looking at her with obvious distrust. Éponine tried to break free from his grasp and failed – the man had an iron grip indeed – and he instantly reacted by shaking her, almost having her slip off her feet.
"Hey!" she answered loudly. "Stop that! Release me!".
Being a girl in distress could be a weapon, and out of the corner of her eye, Éponine indeed saw a few visitors turning towards her. With a bit of luck there might be a few on her side, unwilling to watch the patron manhandling a slender girl.
"So that you can steal from my clients, gamine?" the man gave back nastily. "I don't think so."
Well played, Éponine had to admit. But she was not at the end of her ropes.
"I don't steal", she gave back, offended. "I'm looking for Abati."
"He's not here", the patron answered roughly and began to drag her towards the entrance without mercy. "He's not coming here. Find him somewhere else."
"But he has been here", Éponine insisted, now almost shouting. She was being dragged of the premises, fighting every step along the way, but her only hope was that, if the patron was unwilling to help her, some of the visitors of the tavern might. "And I just want to know where I can find Abati now."
Repeating the name over and over again, hoping that someone would be close enough to listen and good-willing enough to help her.
"Stop bothering my guests, gamine", the patron snarled, and with a final shove, she found herself back on the streets, barely being able to keep on her feet. She considered showering him in a variety of fine curses in argot, but she barely restrained her own frustration. She did not want to scare off any people potentially still willing to tell her the whereabouts of the Picpus group, and somehow, this behavior felt wrong.
Of course, she was not used to being manhandled, and of course she was very unwilling to let an insult pass uncommented. But somehow the imagination that someone of the people she had mixed and mingled with during these last days would hear her cursing at the top of her lungs like the street girl she was had a wrong feel to it, wrong and even somewhat embarrassing.
So, Éponine had to resort to different measures.
Sitting down in the middle of the place in front of the cemetery, she started to think.
Azelma had probably been here, and the Picpus group had been something of a small hope anyhow. It had been based on the fact that she knew that they met in the three canards, but either they had not been there today, or – almost equally likely – they had been faced with the same reception that had expected Les Amis this morning in the Musain.
So, maybe none of them had seen anything about Azelma anyhow.
Éponine stared at the silent walls of the cemetery. There was, of course still the Picpus brother. He would have been here, at least, and if any major event would have happened here, he should know, being in the direct vicinity of it. It was a slim hope, but it was all she could think of at the moment.
If nothing else, he might be able to help her find someone with more information.
Of course, cemetery, monastery, cloister, all were long closed for the night, but Éponine had found her way into a prison. She was pretty sure that she could find her way into a holy place.
Twenty minutes later, her bare feet touched the cool, damp grass of the back parts of the cemetery, and the moist ground swallowed each sound her impact could have made. She waited for a moment for her eyes to adjust and and found that she had dropped into a flower bed next to the outer wall of the cemetery, leaving footprints in a sea of forget-me-nots.
The premises were silent and peaceful.
The cemetery was a mixture of graves, gravel paths and flower beds, arranged carefully and beautifully, a serene resting place for the dead and yet not fully bereft of new life. The monastery, on the other side of the cemetery, was closed off by a separate, lower wall, and few windows were still lit, showing that not all the monks had gone to sleep yet.
Still further off was the nunnery of Petit-Picpus, nestled behind the larger men's cloister, but Éponine had no business there and her attention drifted off again. Her gaze wandered through the dark garden, and only a few moments later, she realized, that somewhere along the wall there was a soft, demure, golden glow that did not belong to the monastery itself.
She remembered that Bahorel, who had been here to find members of the Picpus group during the first, hectic day since the attacks, had told her that Frater Antoine took care of a little chapel somewhere back within the cemetery, and while Éponine did not know the direction that the church would be located in, she was willing to believe that she might be, for once, lucky.
She turned towards the flickering glow, and after a little walk through the gardens – her feet moving soundlessly on the cool, moist grass – she saw the shape of a small church appearing that indeed seemed to match the description that Bahorel had given.
And within the church, shadows were moving, the source of the light a lone candle wandering about the chapel. It was carried by a shape that was indiscernable through the almost blind windows that allowed no further gaze inside.
Slowly, Éponine approached and found the entrance door slightly open, a small slit allowing for light and voices to emerge from the inside of the chapel. Voices. As in more than one. Naturally wary and suspicious, Éponine leaned against the wall next to the door and listened to the conversation inside.
"So what now?" To her surprise, the voice was somewhat familiar, even if she was not immediately able to connect it to a person or a face. There was worry in the tone, and a certain hesitancy.
"He's not here, that's for sure", a second man answered and Éponine silently congratulated herself on her caution. Whoever this was, it was not who she had expected to find. Creeping slightly closer to the door she tried to get a glimpse of the people inside.
"I take it this hasn't happened before", asked the first one again, and his counterpart laughed with a tinge of bitterness in his voice.
"Not without forewarning, no. He never misses an appointment. And where else would he be?"
"Where else indeed." The reply carried a certain weight that sounded almost nasty, bearing a certain weight that Éponine could not explain. Running on the street instincts that usually served her well she was fairly certain that whoever was inside was not a member of the Picpus group.
And that probably made him not a friend.
"Here is blood."
The third voice seemed slightly further off, and Éponine suspected that whoever had spoken was located somewhere deeper inside the small church building. The voice carried a strange, high tone and sounded somewhat squealish.
"Where?" the second voice asked and there was an amount of hectic shuffling, while Éponine clenched her fists and kept her fear in check. Whatever had happened here, it was worth finding out, and she was a gamine, used to the streets, and should not be afraid of such a danger. None the less, she used the time during which the men inside the chapel obviously examined the blood one of their numbers had found to search for a possible escape route and hiding places.
It would not do to be caught unawares.
The darkness of the cloudy night, at least, would be a friend.
"That is a lot of blood", the familiar voice said after a while, aiming for professional neutrality. "And whoever has bled has moved about the room." A few steps wandered around and Éponine shrank back slightly into the shadows when she heard them coming closer to the door. "Over to here, you see? There is a whole puddle of it, dried of course, but still." Through the slit, Éponine saw a shadow moving, but all that she could see was a dark shape, dark coat, a top hat. He seemed to stop somewhere and crouched onto the floor, obviously taking a closer look. "Not enough for someone to die, though", he constated after a moment's inspection. "Whoever that was, he's still alive or died somewhere else."
"A trace is leading towards the door", the third one commented. "And it's not passing your puddle, so I guess there's two wounded at least."
"One of them may be him." There was genuine worry in the voice of the man next to the puddle. "The question is, whom did he fight?"
"We won't find out here." The voice of the second man was decisive and firm. "There's nothing to do for us here at the moment. The Hound is dead. The Friend is gone. We'll have to resort to other means to find them."
Éponine had no idea what they were talking about. But their manner of speaking, the accent, the hint of argot, the use of nicknames and synonymes instead of given names, reminded her rather of a street rat, and not so much on a student or workingman.
None of their associates then, finally.
"But do we have other means?" the first one asked doubtfully, and was responded with something that sounded like a bitter snort.
"Boy, you have no idea", the third one answered. "You have no idea who he is."
"Don't patronize me." That sounded annoyed, sharp in tone.
"Do you really think this is the time for quarrel?" The second one seemed to play the role of the voice of reason in this conversation, and Éponine heard some more moving. "We have to leave, and you can finish that discussion elsewhere, if this is what you want. We will find a way, and we will find the Friend if he wants to be found. Let's go."
Éponine, heart pouning, dove for the shadows.
They left the church in silence, three of them, and with every shadow that appeared, Éponine dug her fingers deeper into the soft earth she was crouching on, leaned a bit more against the thorns of the bush that served as her cover against discovery. The pain was pinching and the earth was cool and moist and both of it was real, anchoring her and chasing away the fear.
The first man to leave the church was unfamiliar, slender and probably no taller than herself. He moved with the unconscious grace of one who has dedicated his life in one or the other way to the training of the body and Éponine was certain that he was fast. And probably stronger than he looked.
The second man, however, was much more familiar to her. Sh could not see his face – it was much too dark and she was rather satisfied with that fact for it hid her well – but his stature was unmistakeable. Small, almost unnaturally small, seemingly more child than man.
His image brought back memories of a burglary attempt gone wrong, of a room with a dead man on a bed, a woman cornered, defending herself with the courage of desperation.
Or rather, now that she knew her better, defending herself with the courage of Hélène de Cambout.
Éponine, not easily scared, felt her lips go cold in fear. Why had the assassins sought out the Picpus brother? To kill him? No, the conversation had not sounded like that at all. Which left only one way of interpretation.
Betrayal.
Of course. It made sense. So many of the Picpus group dead. They had been murdered by the man they trusted, probably murdered by the man they ran to for protection. She barely could refrain from slamming her hand against her forehead. That was something that one of them should have seen earlier. Much, much earlier.
Her first thought was to run back to Rue Pascal to warn Enjolras and the others – they had trusted the Picpus brother and would continue to do so if no one warned them; and it was clear that the moment one of them was alone and unsupervised with Frater Antoine, things were becoming very dangerous very quickly. But of course she had to wait until they were gone.
The dwarf would be only too keen to settle old debts, she feared.
And then the third man left the church. And Éponine almost screamed.
She realized why the voice had sounded familiar, because she knew him, and knew him well. The dark coat was familiar, and so was the top head. She could see his face no more than she had seen the others, but there was no need, the posture and movements were much too familiar already. Elegance and neglect. Strength and confidence.
Montparnasse.
And in a horrific moment of glory, everything, everything became clear.
Dimly she became aware of the tears running down her cheeks, although she was not sure why she was crying – shock, anger, betrayal – and she bit her fingers to stay silent, to remain motionless, a shadow, a little beggar, nothing more.
They closed the door behind them and hurried for the cemetery wall.
And Éponine remained cowered on the floor and waited.
She was not sure how much time had passed when it was starting to rain. It was a curious rain considering the season, a warm, soft drizzle instead of the furious thunderstorms that summer usually brought, but maybe the storm had worn itself out earlier and this soft, tender rain was all that remained, fervor spent, leaving only the will to simply continue.
Somehow, Éponine thought, this was fitting well to how she was feeling.
She was used to wandering between people and worlds, to deal with enemies, to negotiate with both sides of the same coin. But never had she found herself between the front lines as she did now.
She had promised Enjolras she would help the students, in revolution as well as against the assassins.
Only to find out that Montparnasse apparently was one of them. Montparnasse, who had saved her from the most horrific predicament she had ever found herself in mere two days before.
But of course he had only been able to do that because he had known her tormenter and his haunts. Suddenly it made sense.
Still, Montparnasse had saved her life. Twice, she realized with a flash, because seeing him with some of the assassins had also explained the curious errand the evening before.
He had tried to keep her away from Corinthe. Because he knew what was going to happen. Still protecting her like he had when she was only a girl and unfamiliar with the harsh rules of the streets of Paris. Still protecting her like when they had been more than they were now.
Éponine was under no illusion about the character and occupation of Montparnasse. But when it came to her, he had always been his own special brand of good.
He had felt responsible for her. And he probably still did.
A life saved – twice - was a debt that was not easily repaid.
And sitting under a bush, on a cemetery in the middle of Paris, Éponine realized that the time had come, out of nowhere, where her old and new lives would no longer be able to coexist.
Montparnasse or Enjolras?
The life she knew or the life she dreamed of? Fighting her way through the streets or risking glorious death at a barricade? Truth or dare? Family and friends or hope for a better future?
She buried her head in her hands and let out a quiet groan.
"Heavens"; she sighed in despair. "What am I going to do?"
But the softly crying sky had no answer for her. And thus, as always, Éponine had to rely on herself.
"Get up", she chided herself, pinching her arm for good measure, and the pain was rallying, if nothing else. "Let's get to the bottom of this."
Continuing, as she always had done, Éponine took a careful look around and then stepped into the darkness of the church.
Almost immediately, she wished she had brought a candle as the others did, because with the night being as dark as it was and the windows stained with the grime of years and years, the inside was almost pitch black.
Éponine opened the door widely and this improved the situation slightly. Slowly only, her eyes adjusted to her surroundings and she was able to see more.
Four benches. Candlesticks along the walls, filled with candles that had never been lit. An altar , elevated by two steps at the far end of the church.
And a shape under a white linen cloth.
She remembered the words of the assassins.
'The Hound is dead. The Friend is gone.'
The Hound is dead.
Slowly, Éponine stepped towards the altar, sidestepping the darker patches on the floor that probably were the blood that the three men had talked about.
The blood. What had happened here?
Reaching the altar she pulled back the cloth to reveal the face of the man lying there and did not even find the strength within her any more to be surprised.
He was remarkably still and silent in death, given how quick and agile he had been in life, when he had stabbed her, when he had caught her, when he had…
Images were flooding her, imagined sceneries, based on scent and feel and hearing only, her, lying tied up in a bed and the man luring above and around her, sniffing and sniffing and whispering and touching. Like a layer of dirt and grease memory enfolded her, a second skin of disdain and abhorrence.
Éponine gritted her teeth and clenched her fists at her side, taking deep breaths and willing the images away. He was dead. He could not find her any more.
Now, he was still, and Éponine, knowing well the force that reality could have, touched his neck, touched his forehead and found it cold as the stone he was lying on. Death was a strange enchantment, he thought, this forced silence and motionlessness, after all the running and fighting, after the life he had led and the things he had done. He had been an angel of death, a reaper, and now, finally, he was facing his own judgement.
He was dead.
He was the Hound.
Montparnasse was his accomplice.
Montparnasse had saved her from him.
Another accomplice was part of the Picpus group.
Azelma had vanished.
And this church had seen a fight.
She knew too much and yet too little. The situation had grown out of hand and suddenly all threads of action had been taken from her with a single stroke. Suddenly, she was the gamine again, the Jondrette, the girl that was played by circumstances, the girl that reacted instead of following her own destiny.
It was another, a second fall from grace, and it was all the harder because she had climbed so high. It was akin to coming to Paris after having grown up in the "Sergeant of Waterloo", of falling into the harsh world unprepared, but it was all the more terrible because she had thought to have found a means of escape.
But now, her hope for escape had led her here.
For all her previous predicaments, Éponine found that she had never felt quite as alone as she had now in her life. For all the difficult times she had had, there had at least been someone… Azelma, Montparnasse, anyone… someone to share worry and hard times with, someone to talk to, someone to trust. She had learned early to take her own responsibilities, but it was something completely different to be on her own entirely, no pack of wolves to run with, no den of thieves to hide.
But whom could she talk to now? Azelma had vanished and was unaccounted for. Montparnasse… was part of the problem. Her parents? That had been out of the question for a very, very long while.
Enjolras?
He would not understand.
Éponine shook her head and raked her hands through her hair, pulling at the strands strongly enough to feel pain, and it had a calming effect on her. It did clear her thoughts a bit.
Alone. Completely alone.
And then, she remembered. There was one person in this city who, if nothing else, would understand and at least listen to her. The one person she knew that had started out alone, deserted and friendless, with no one to talk to or show him the ropes.
The ultimate survivor. Her brother. Gavroche.
Éponine was a woman of quick decisions and turned around on her heel, leaving the church behind, not even bothering to close the door. Like the quiet, silent shadow she was she left behind the place of the crime and dove into the night.
He was drifting in and out of sleep for he knew not how long. He was in pain, excrutiatingly so, and through the white hot agony that was coursing through his body it was difficult to find and form any clear thought at all.
Vaguely, he was aware of someone feeding him soup with a spoon, of a cup being held to his lips, and he swallowed mechanically before diving into dreams of fire again. Reality and imagination mixed and mingled while he shivered and sweated and could not remember where or who he was, or what had brought him into this state of agony in the first place.
Images mingled, of a prison and a race through the night, of confusion, of faces with and without names, and as much as he tried to make sense of them, nothing seemed to offer itself and he was lost.
He was putting up a valiant fight. He was strong, and something within him was as unyielding as wild, untamed things usually are, and slowly, bit by bit, his body was gaining the upper hand.
He had no idea how much time had passed when he finally woke, opening his eyes to a cellar room with a few lone candles burning. He was lying on a cot, covered with a crude blanket that had seen better days, and his upper body was bandaged strongly enough that he found it difficult to move at all.
The walls were unadorned, but the room was fairly big. He had no idea how he had gotten here, but the parched feel of his mouth and the weakened state of his muscles indicated that he must have been sick and this left him with preciously few alternatives.
Probably, he was at Toureille's.
Somewhere in the room, someone was screaming.
Gueulemer was not, by nature, a curious man. He had made it a habit and manner of life to stay away from most of the dealings of other people and had been self content. Even about his colleagues, the fellow thieves from Patron-Minette, there was fairly little he knew and he preferred to keep it that way. He was no friend of idle chatter.
Something about these screams, however, did reach a note somewhere within him and he raised his head with some difficulty to make out the source of the noise and understand what was going on.
On another cot, a few steps down the room, he could see the man himself, Toureille, bent over the shape of another patient. Toureille was a rather small man, black-haired, fair-faced and on the whole good-looking, a man that could have easily passed as someone of higher education, and probably more often than not did. That, at least, was how most people guessed he came by the medicine he occasionally gave to his patients.
True to form, Gueulemer had never inquired much more in that respect.
The man that Toureille was bowed over was older than Gueulemer, his hair receding at the temples, his beard already covered mostly in grey. Blood was seeping from a wound in his belly and he was moving uncontrollably, screaming, shaking, his fingers scratching along the surface he was lying on.
Gueulemer wondered if he had acted in the same manner and was somewhat glad that he did not remember. Not, that he would have felt embarrassed by it – he was not vain or proud, and certainly not in need to prove anything to anyone – but he was glad not to remember the pain. In fact, the veil which hid the time of his sickness was a grace of its own kind.
Frowning, Gueulemer continued to look around and found, on a bench near the operation table, a curious garment that he had certainly not expected here.
He would have thought the brothers of Picpus would have better means of medical attention than a street doctor who was not much better than a common butcher and certainly not cleaner.
So either he was very wrong or there was something strange about this man.
But again, Gueulemer was, on the whole not particularly curious and stayed out of other people's business.
And so he did not ask.